Growing up in Birch Harbor, Southwest Harbor Town Clerk Marilyn Lowell graduated from Sumner High School and later earned an associate’s degree in developmental disabilities at Bangor Community College. She worked three years at the Elizabeth Levinson Center in Bangor before returning to Sumner as a Resource Room education technician for 12 years.

Marilyn worked for 2½ years at the Ellsworth Middle School as an ed tech. Then “I worked for Morrison Chevrolet almost three years as a receptionist and part time in the business office,” she recalled.

Leaving that job, Marilyn worked 11½ years at the Hancock Town Office as the registrar of voters, general assistance administrator, deputy treasurer, and deputy tax collector. Stacey Clement was then Hancock’s administrative assistant and treasurer, and “I believe we were the two longest counterparts working” in the town office, Marilyn said.

A Hancock resident, she became the Southwest Harbor town clerk in August 2013. Although the two towns are similar in size (Hancock actually more residents), “it seems like it’s a lot busier here than in Hancock,” said Marilyn, a notary and a certified clerk of Maine.

Her son, Michael, a commercial fisherman living in Hancock, drags for wild mussels with his dragger. Her daughter, Natasha, is a radiation therapist living in Jacksonville, Florida. Marilyn also has a granddaughter, Wendy.

“I like living at camp,” Marilyn said. “We have campers out at Molasses Pond” in Eastbrook, and “we usually live there from Memorial Day weekend” to the second weekend in October.

“It’s quiet. It’s nice: a lot of fishing, kayaking, a little four-wheeling,” she said. “You go down over that hill [on the Molasses Pond Road], and no matter how bad a day you’re having, it just makes it disappear.”